Laurel Vaughn, left, Jeff Lyons, center, and David Pike, work to remove and transfer organ pipes from the Tinker Memorial Organ made by M.P. Moller into boxes for storage while working inside of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Coliseum.

2013 Jason Clark

Photographs by JASON CLARK / COURIER & PRESS
A group of organ enthusiasts, volunteers and University of Evansville faculty members load boxes of wooden pipes from the Tinker Memorial Organ made by M.P. Moller onto a truck while working to remove them from the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Coliseum in Evansville on Wednesday. Professors from the University of Evansville are hoping to relocate the old organ that was installed in the Coliseum in 1919.

2013 Jason Clark

EVANSVILLE - One hundred years later, the Milton Z. Tinker Memorial Organ has finally left the building.

This week, University of Evansville staff and volunteers are on a rescue mission. They are packing up the 4,000 pipes and moving them to a safe storage location. Once there, the pipes will wait in their boxes for the university to raise enough money to embark on Phase 2.

The plan is for the university, eventually, to remodel its Neu Chapel so that it welcomes all faiths, said UE Chaplain Tammy Gieselman. Part of that remodel will involve repurposing the Tinker Memorial Organ inside the facility.

They say "repurposing" because the university will not rebuild the organ as it exists now. They can't. Those pipes are old. The lucky ones are just caked in dust. Others have more extensive damage. They rotted and rusted away when water pipes in the Coliseum burst. They bent and broke beneath falling objects or careless feet.

On Monday, organ building experts took their first look at the state of Evansville's historic organ.

Schreiner is overseeing the organ removal with another organ builder, David Pike. Pike's company, C.B. Fisk, Inc., may ultimately repurpose the organ for the university.

For the organ to make music again, all the pipes (not just the damaged ones) must be repurposed, Pike said.

The Tinker Organ was designed to be hidden from view, as was the style of the time. The pipes were housed in backrooms on all sides of the building. That meant they had to be loud — very loud — which required a lot of air pressure delivered to pipes with large mouths.

"These had the snot blown out of them," Schreiner said, pointing to the mouth of a wooden pipe.

The new Tinker Memorial Organ will require significantly less wind power to be heard, he explained. The pipes will be closer to the intended audience. So the mouths of each pipe must be made smaller.

"These pipes, entombed for years, will have never had it so good," Pike said. "They will, literally, breathe a sigh of relief."

The university does not yet have a timeline for when the Neu Chapel will be rebuilt or the Tinker Organ repurposed, Gieselman said.

However, they have set up a fund for community members to contribute to the Tinker Organ's restoration. To donate visit evansville.edu/give. Select "Gift Designation," then "Tinker Memorial Organ Fund" from the drop-down menu.